The Pioneer Institute, American Principles Project and Pacific Research Institute released a study of how much it will cost the 45 states and the District of Columbia to implement the Common Core State Standards. President Obama offered up $4.35 billion in stimulus money through his Race to the Top program. The start up costs nationally is estimated to be $10.5 billion with at least $16 Billion to be spent over the first seven years.

They addressed midrange estimates which only includes the basic expenditures required for the implementation of the new standards. Things like the assessment of students, professional development of teachers, technology needed, and textbooks & other instructional materials. These costs do not include the cost of additional expensive or controversial reforms that are sometimes recommended to help students performance such as performance-based compensation and smaller class sizes.

The Iowa Legislature is currently considering Governor Branstad’s education bill which include an expansion of the Iowa Core and alignment of Iowa’s standards with those of the Common Core Curriculum. In light of that it would be good to share the estimated numbers for Iowa. Iowa has joined an assessment consortia, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), which makes an impact on the cost for the state.

AccountabilityWorks who was commissioned to do the study for the groups mentioned above estimated the costs for Iowa to be over the next seven years to be:

Approximately $60 million for professional development for teachers

Approximately $26 million for textbooks

$75 million for technology.

So Iowa is facing an estimated price tag of at least $161 million and that isn’t including assessments as they didn’t give a breakdown of the cost per state. This is just to implement the common core. It doesn’t include the operational costs we already pay for.

The Iowa Legislature needs to ask themselves is it worth the cost to Iowa’s taxpayers to implement these standards which further erode our sovereignty over the education of our children.